Tag: Beta

It’s time again to sync up your iDevices and try out a new iOS. Only if you are a developer, that is. That’s right, Apple has released the sixth beta version of iOS 5 to registered developers. It was only two weeks ago when beta 5 was released into the wild.

Developers (and non-developers with developer accounts) everywhere are now downloading a whole suite of new beta software form Apple’s Developer Portal. Alongside the new beta of iOS, Apple has also released new Betas for iTunes, iWork for iOS, Xcode, and iOS for Apple TV. Unfortunately, we don’t have much information regarding the contents of these releases.

For those of us who aren’t devs, news like this is also good. The official release notes is a laundry list of bug fixes and polish, which means Apple is probably getting feature set with iOS 5. That would mean that the beta stage is coming to a close, and a full release is coming very soon.

Like I said, it doesn’t look like anything shiny and new has been built into these betas. However, if we find anything interesting, we will update this post to let you know. Keep your eyes here for more information. If you are interested, BGR has posted the complete change log.

Are you excited for the launch of iOS 5? Do you plan on using iCloud and iTunes Match? Do you think we will see the iPhone 5 at the same time as the newest version of iOS? Get yourself heard by leaving a comment below.

Back at WWDC in June, Apple announced a little project they call iCloud. It is their response to the idea of cloud computing, and it looks like it could be pretty nice. They have promised that every user will get 5GB of storage for free, with things purchased from Apple not counting towards your total. However, many users have been begging for pricing for additional storage.

Well, Apple is finally ready to dish on iCloud pricing. So far, we have been able to dig up pricing in US dollars,Pounds, and Euros. It looks like 10GB of storage will run you $20/ £14/16â‚¬, 20GB will be $40/ £28/32â‚¬, and 50GB will cost $100/ £70/80â‚¬. All of those prices are per year, not one shot.

If you are wondering where these prices came from, then I will be happy to tell you. It seems as thought Apple has flipped the switch on iCloud.com, bringing with it a beta test of iCloud. It looks like anyone with an Apple ID is capable of trying to sign-up. However, when I tried on my MacBook Pro running Lion, I couldn’t get it to work.

Early reports indicate that the current revision of iCloud is simply MobileMe made over. It offers a number of the same features, including a whole suite of web apps. The interface is very reminiscent of MobileMe, and even iOS. Its clear that Apple is continuing its mission to blur the lines between mobile and desktop platforms.

If you want to try and check out the beta, you can do so at iCloud.com. Let us know what you think of this update, or even iCloud in general, by leaving a comment below.

Apple released iOS 5 Beta 4 to developers today, bringing with it the ability to update over the air. Given that you are running iOS 5 Beta 3, you should be able to get the update without syncing to you computer. Bad news is that there are reports of the update not working, and, if it does, you will lose all your pictures and need to sync after the update.

Despite those complications, this is big news for iOS. This is first time that Apple has tried thier new wireless update feature, and that means that the development on iOS 5 is moving forward. This update adds mroe fuel to the rumor fires, which are now targeting September as the release date for iOS 5, iCloud, and the rumored iPhone 5.

This newest iOS beta also brings the much anticipated wireless sync feature to Windows. In previous version, this feature was restricted to Mac computers. This is good news for those who choose to update over-the-air, because you could use wireless sync afterwards. That’s the theory, at least.

As for the rest of the changes, you can see them over at BGR. They have been kind enough to post the change log for the beta in its entirety.

If any of you are iPhone users, and have access to the beta software, we would love to hear if you managed to update over-the-air. If you can pull it off, let us know in the comments below. We won’t ask you for any extra details, as you probably can’t tell us anyway.

In addition to the new iOS beta, Apple has also released iTunes 10.5 Beta 4 and Xcode 4.2 Developer Preview 4. All the updates are avaliable now in the Apple Dev channel.

On Friday, Apple released iOS 5 Beta 2, the next version of its mobile operating system for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. You will need a paid ($99/year) developer account to download this beta, and you can sign in with your developer credentials to gain access. The latest beta release brings WiFi sync to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

WiFi Sync was one of the features touted at Apple’s WWDC event, and allows iOS 5 users to sync their devices to their iTunes libraries without a computer. As of now, you can use WiFi Sync only with iTunes for Mac.

Notifications on the lockscreen are redone â€” they’re much, much bigger for a single alert, then shows in list view for multiple alerts.

iMessage only works with iOS beta 2 both ways, but it’s super fast now. We’re guessing Apple changed the servers they used for this.

When creating an iCloud account you can use any Apple ID provided it is a full email address and not a MobileMe account. If you have a MobileMe account, you can copy data from that account to an iCloud account to use during testing. You can find more information on iCloud at: http://developer.apple.com/icloud

It looks like most of those plans are now finally beginning to take shape with the release of WordPress 3.2 Beta 1. WordPress 3.2 will contain several new changes including dropping support for older technologies like PHP4 and MySQL4 among other things. WordPress 3.2 requires PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0 to run.

In addition to that, WordPress 3.2 will also stop supporting Internet Explorer 6. Users browsing the site through IE6 will be shown a message to switch their browsers.

WordPress 3.2 also includes several performance improvements which make it faster than the earlier version. One more new addition that will be liked by users is the inclusion of Distraction-free Writing in the visual editor. Additionally, WordPress 3.2 includes a refresh to the Admin UI and a new default theme called Twenty Eleven. It will also include more links in the admin bar, however, you can always disable or hide the Admin bar in WordPress if you don’t like it.

Overall the changes look pretty decent and should make the next generation of WordPress better than its predecessor. I will be doing a full review of WordPress 3.2 shortly, so stay tuned for it.

Here are some of the major changes that are included in WordPress 3.2:

Performance improvements like you wouldn’t believe. What’s that mean? Things are faster!

Distraction-free Writing. The visual editor’s full-screen composing experience has gotten a major overhaul, and is now available from HTML mode, too. More than ever, WordPress allows you to focus on what matters most â€” your content.

Admin UI Refresh. The last major redesign of the WordPress admin was in 2008. This isn’t a major redesign, just a little facelift to keep us feeling young. WordPress turns 8 later this month, you know.

New Default Theme. Introducing Twenty Eleven, based on the popular Duster theme. Rotating header images, post format support, and more.

Browse Happy. WordPress is made to work with modern browsers. If you visit your Dashboard using an outdated web browser, we’ll let you know there’s a newer version available.

Admin Bar. We’ve added more links to the admin bar to make it even more useful.

WordPress has new minimum system requirements: PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0.

Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be supported.

The favorites menu has been removed. If you’ve written any plugins that use this menu, it’s time to switch over to an admin bar placement.

Earlier Today, Google launched Google Music at Google I/O 2011. The new music service will seamlessly integrate with Android mobiles and Android tablets.

Sadly, the service will be limited to US only for the initial period and there is no information on when it will be rolled out to other countries. Google Music is a service which gives you access to your personal music collection without the need to use wires or sync. You can add your music collection to Google music and access it from the web or any other compatible Android device.

If you are interested in trying out the new service, you can request a beta invite for the service by visiting http://music.google.com. You can learn more about Google Music by visiting this page.

After a two days delay, the Mandriva team has released the first beta of Mandriva 2011 yesterday. This is a release meant for testing before the final version is released in June 2011.

Mandriva 2011 Beta 1 is based on the Linux kernel 2.6.37.2 and has KDE Software Compilation 4.6.1 for its desktop. This Linux kernel is not the latest version available, but the KDE SC is the latest stable version. It will be upgraded to Linux kernel 2.6.38 in a later update or in beta 2. For users who do not prefer KDE SC, Mandriva is also available with GNOME 2.32.1 and XFCE 4.8.0.

Mandriva 2011 Beta 1 features the latest versions of various applications like Firefox 4 Release Candidate 1, Thunderbird 3.1.9, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 etc. The default music player in Mandriva 2011 Beta 1 is Clementine 0.6 and Choqok is included as the default microblogging client. I find it interesting that Mandriva is still sticking with OpenOffice rather than LibreOffice unlike Ubuntu and Fedora.

Visually too, Mandriva 2011 Beta 1 has some changes. The GUI installer now uses the same theme as the default Mandriva theme. The KDE style and KDE window theme has also be changed to use Qtcurve by default.

Under the hood, this release has a lot of updated components as well. Of the updated components, mention may be made of systemd 20 , network manager 0.8.3.997, X.Org 7.5, XOrg Server 1.9.4 etc.

As with any beta software, Mandriva 2011 Beta 1 is meant for testing and should not be used in production machines. If you want to test it, you can download it from one of the mirrors in the link below.

Just as you would expect with any modern smartphone sold nowadays, continued support is in very high demand, namely software support and updates. Unlike Android, iOS has very controlled hardware that it runs on and only devices sanctioned (read: designed and built) by Apple get the thumbs up for iOS. This gives Apple the great ability to control the user experience and control what features a user has access to and what they don’t.

With the update of iOS 4.3b2, developers should expect a slew of new features including the ability to create a personal hotspot on the device (for WiFi tethering) and some new API for gesture control. Apple has indicated that end-users may not be getting gesture support once 4.3 goes live and it is mainly for developers to test their applications, implement gesture support or ensure that their code does not conflict with any changes.

You can register as a developer (you’ll need to fork over $99 while doing that) to get access to this beta directly from Apple and you’ll receive access to the firmware images that support the Apple TV, iPad, iPhone 4 and 3GS as well as the 3rd and 4th generation iPod Touch. As always, the XCode and Apple SDK are available to download as well.

Most users will want to stay on the carrier supported release, since this is technically beta firmware and is aimed at developers who want to get a jump on gesture controls and any other API calls that Apple has added in.

It’s rumoured that the 3rd beta will be released within a few weeks and should be the final seed before iOS 4.3 is release sometime in February.

Although my previous guess was incorrect, at least it stuck to being from the gaming world. YouTube user Tritext989 used Redstone (a kind of material that can be made into circuits. More info here) to make a circuit that plays the song Still Alivefrom the game Portal composed/sung by Jonathan Coulton. Before you ask, yes it is pretty good even though it’s just the intro part.

If you want to know how to craft your own note blocks and how to tune them, this video handles it quite well.

If you want to skip making your own song and just play what Tritext989 has made on your own computer (not as a video), the original map file has also been linked to by the gracious creator. Download the map from our servers here.

To play this map, go to the .minecraft folder and unzip it to the Saves’ folder in that directory. Rename the file to World[1-5] (i.e. World1 or World2 or World5; the game only acknowledges the numbers 1 to 5).

On a Windows machine, the .minecraft folder is in your AppData directory. Simply run WinKey+R and type %appdata% and press enter.

On a Mac, the saves are in this folder: ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves/

Before we get on with this post, I want to ask you, the reader, what the number one followed by six zeroes actually implies. In terms of dollar bills, one million $1 bills would weigh just over 1 ton. However, since a copy of Minecraft does not sell for $1 (it sells now for $20 and was sold for $13 earlier), Minecraft developer @notch has about 13 to 20 tons of $1 bills in his bank account. (More correctly they are in his company, Mojang Specifications’ bank account).

What is more phenomenal is that this game is not even a fully polished, fully released version. It’s still beta. So when a post saying that Minecraft has sold one million copies is titled Exclamation Mark, it is very understated. As an honorary, the millionth customer was given a custom unique cloak to use in multiplayer games:-

That’s all very nice and all, but what is the point of all this if the game is not updated at all? Thankfully no one got to ask that question the devs of Minecraft released v1.2 yesterday to a huge amount of happy sighs from the customers. The awesome bits of the new update are note blocks (which you can tune and play). I can’t wait to see Rube Goldberg machines made out of this that play the Mario theme or something. Trust me that’s going to happen sometime.

The full list of updates are on Notch’s tumblr. Have fun playing with all the new goodies!